Wherever it was, man found a way to go down under the
water, to upturn the sod of quiet pastoral lands, to split open the
face of majestic hills, and dig out coal.

Last week two novels of coal-diggers' tragedies, one laid in England and one
in Illinois, gave strong evidence of the fascination that the subterranean
life exerts on the imaginations of men who spend their days above ground. Both
books are packed with...